


lovesick

by Emeka



Category: Summon Night (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Incest, M/M, Yandere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:26:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29344323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeka/pseuds/Emeka
Summary: Ghift really, REALLY loves Folth.
Relationships: Erst Brattern/Ghift Brattern/Folth, Folth/Kagerou (Summon Night)
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> technically a continuation of Everything's Eventual. based on the kinktoberxwhumptober thing on twitter that i wrote onto a google doc and have since lost the original link to :/
> 
> no teeechnical underage but if that skeeves you probably won't like this

Consciousness drifts in and out, like a wave. Grey covers his brief moments of vision. Sea foam. When it recedes he only exists, unaware even of the fact of him looking up, or at anything, or even that he is looking at all. There is the grey, and a heaviness he resides in that he does not yet realize.

There’s no telling how much time passes. He exists. Sometimes.

Eventually the wave draws back further than it had before, putting him in a low-tide state of existence. He finds he can blink. Breathe. He holds it in until his lungs ache, then notices he is in fact aching all over.

Something’s wrong.

He’s still half-out of himself but he forces his eyes to really see, and his brain to really think. He’s in a stone-walled room. It’s a little cold. There’s a flat pillow beneath his head, sheets under his body. The floor is a few feet below so he’s on an actual bed, or at least a cot. The last he remembers… he blanks.

He tries to force himself to sit up next, but his arms won’t move right. He pulls, then they stop. Something jangles. Pulls again. Jangles. His wrists hurt. Wait. They’re above his head, so he has to crane his stiff neck to see. For a moment he is blank again, under the waves, then his chest freezes over with dismay. Shackles. He’s shackled to the bed frame. Has he been trained on what to do in a situation like this? He is having a hard time recalling protocol. Or much of---”Oh!”

There had been a fight. There had been a lot of those lately, but this one was against the Crimson Chain, and some Netherbeings. The details are still fuzzy but obviously he’d been defeated. Why, then, did they not kill him? Not that he doesn’t think it was a good decision but he’d like to know for what purpose he’s being kept around for. Some kind of collateral, a hostage, would be his bet.

Kagerou… where’s Kagerou? Or the others?

A Summoner can summon their Cross to them whenever they want. But Folth and Kagerou have spent every moment together since their meeting ten years ago. He has never _needed_ to summon him, and so the ability is something he has theoretical knowledge of but not instinct for. It does not occur to him to even try, and the question of Kagerou’s safety has him so flustered it is becoming difficult to think again. Fierce anxiety blurs the edges of his rational mind into something base. If they decided they had a use for Folth, surely they had one for Kagerou---but what if they don’t? What if they decided they only needed one? Or that one would be less risky?

If Kagerou had been hurt---if worse---

A door opens from somewhere behind him, to the right. He freezes.

“Finally awake, are you?”

Ghift’s voice. He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. Would he hurt---stupid question, of course he’d hurt Kagerou, already tried before, and that’s far more important than his seeming ambivalence about physically harming Folth.

(he wants him to witness his rise to greatness, after all)

He tries to turn his head again, but there’s no need; Ghift is walking into view for him, holding onto a glass of water. All that comes out of his throat when he attempts to speak is a croak.

“Being a Summoner must be exhausting. They beat you sillier than I preferred, but you should have healed of those injuries by now.” He gazes at him closely, leaning down. Ghift, his childhood best friend, who was kind of weird but not a bad person. His eyes are sharper than they were then, and the irises a colder shade of grey.

“Kage…”

“Hm? The ogre boy?” His lips pull into a lopsided grin. “Concerned, are you?”

“Ghift…!”

“Yes, ‘Ghift’. That’s the only person you should be concerned with right now.” He sits on his bedside. “I’ve been hand-feeding you ice chips for the past week to keep you hydrated. You should at least be a little grateful.”

Folth stares up at him helplessly. That’s all well and good, but why? And his friends, are they being held somewhere too? Or did they escape? “Kagerou?”

“Nevermind him. I told you.” His smile widens. It even looks like he means it. “You’re here with me. Let yourself depend on me. You’re still tired, right? I’ll hand-feed you still.”

He shakes his head in a numb little side to side.

“Too bad. You need something to drink. Do you think I’m going to infect you? I would have done that already if I intended it.” His fingers dip into the glass and bring out a few slivers of crushed ice. “Open up, now. Don’t get me angry.”

Is that a threat to his own safety? Or…

Ghift’s fingers press against his lips with the piercing cold of the ice. He reluctantly parts them and finds he is as dry as the desert. The chip instantly turns to water to nourish his parched insides, soaking in like a spill of water on dirt baked in the summer heat.

“See, good boy. Just like always.”

It makes him feel like a dog waving its tail but he opens up for the next one too. Woof.

Ghift pushes through his lips, teeth, and into the back of his throat. The ice still melts immediately but the fingers aren’t so easily dislodged. The muscles squeeze and work in an attempt to push but nothing happens except his saliva production kicking in and causing drool to slide down his chin. He’s resigned to whatever this is, in his exhaustion.

Ghift takes his (drenched) fingers back when his eyes are watering. “I did that to you when you were out, too. Seeing the helplessness on your face is far more stimulating.”

He does it again, again, and Folth falls into rhythm, sucking in preparation for each deposit of ice and to keep his gag reflex from going off on its own. All the tender bits of his mouthworks turn plump and juicy as his thirst decreases.

“One more for good measure,” and Ghift presses further down his throat, straight down to where he can’t help sputtering on it. A nail scrapes something, and he can’t help but think of health class and an ovum traveling down the vaginal canal, menstruation, is his throat menstruating?

There’s a washed-out pink on his withdrawn fingertips. Folth swallows. He can’t taste anything. “Ghift… thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiles again. “Now! You’re rather heavy to be lugging around, and I didn’t want anyone… touching you more than necessary. You haven’t been bathed yet, but first, I want to check you for lasting injury.”

“But---” Being timid of Ghift doesn’t feel right in his throat, nor does it coincide with any part of his memories; strange days, he thinks. “Everyone else. What happened?”

The smile does not slip off, nothing so subtle as that. It falls like a brick. “In captivity, like you.” He gives him a hard, considering look that is also alien. “So remember that before trying anything. You don’t have the strength for it, anyway.”

It’s hard to trust him on that (and even after everything, he still wants to) but he allows himself to settle a little for now.

Ghift does not undress him---it’s more like a skinning. With a pocket knife he cuts up the sides of his jacket with short, rough jabs up into the material. Folth forces himself to keep still, though the scratchy sound of cloth being ripped apart makes him wince inside each time, more and more aware of what lies so close to his skin. One slip and he’ll be slicing his arms up instead.

“You keep holding your breath,” Ghift comments. “Relax. I’d never hurt you without meaning to.”

But when he does?

Breathing is something to concentrate on, at least. A quick spot of meditation couldn’t hurt, get through the painful fact that there’s nothing else he can do for himself or anyone else at the moment. As his heart rate lowers Kagerou’s face enters his mind like a shaft of light illuminating the dark. For a moment he sees him perfectly, close enough to pat his head, and the idea of summoning finally occurs to him. But that probably isn’t a good idea right now. If Kagerou is safe it would put him in danger, in the middle of enemy territory. If he really is here, well, same thing. And in the state he’s in Kagerou would have to do the majority of the fighting for them both.

He barely pays attention as his dress shirt is skinned from his hide the same way as the jacket, reduced to strips of cloth. Will Miss Admin scold him for his uniform getting destroyed? Could he tell what happened to it? ‘I was stripped’ sounds concerning by itself, but there’s nothing that concerns him except the chill. He hasn’t really known Ghift for a long time, but they’re both men, and men walk around shirtless all the time in summer.

“You’ve grown up. Knowing that is completely different from seeing you like this.” There’s pain, a bit, as Ghift runs his fingers over what must be bruises. Folth reluctantly resituates his gaze down to his own abdomen. Spots mostly in the greenish-yellow stage of healing litter his body in long stripes where some weapon had met his skin; no actual cuts though, so he must have received a little medical attention. A nastily swollen contusion covers most of his left rib, signifying probable deeper damage and a cause for his exhaustion. Ghift’s palm spans almost the entirety of it. “You must have been popular at the Academy.”

Folth makes a noncommittal sound of assent, then hisses. The contusion is like a barely-flesh rock among the bars of his ribs. It hardly feels like it moves at all as Ghift presses down on it.

“Did you have a lot of dates? Girlfriends? Boyfriends?”

“Eh? N-no… my grades. Kagerou.” Most Summoners don’t receive a Cross, or an Otherworlder a Summoner, until past graduation. Folth is the youngest case of anyone forming a Life Resonance Bond, and received a great deal of attention throughout school as a result. “I didn’t date.”

“Oh, I see,” Ghift says colorlessly. “You were merely as amazing and exceptional as always.”

Silence seems the wisest course. It’s not like he can say---yes. Even if he denied it, Ghift obviously has his own ideas about him. Likewise, he tries to ignore him staring at his face, then his chest (the contusion?) for at least twenty seconds.

The course of wisdom comes to an abrupt crash when Ghift goes for his fly. “H-hey!” he wheezes, trying very pitifully to draw his legs up. They can only twitch in place, unable to block off his button being unsnapped, the zipper unzipping, can’t even hide the triangle of his underwear beneath. “That’s not---!”

“Shy? I’d think you draw enough worship to get over that.” He goes to the foot of the bed and pulls Folth’s slacks off in two hard pulls, one to the knees, then off entirely, leaving him in his dark purple hipshorts. “You might not have _slept_ with anyone, but you’re a bicycle nonetheless.” His fingertips ghost down his soles, provoking an automatic clench from the toes.

Somehow the idea of having his shoes and socks stripped off him while he was sleeping is revolting. It adds a little strength to his voice. “Don’t call me that.”

“What? What you are?” A few more bruises catch his attention, another goose-egg down beside his left shin. He presses along its edges. “Sure you didn’t get these from falling on your knees so much?”

“Stop it. That’s not… not nice.” It’s such a soft, wimpy-sounding word for what’s going on but it’s ultimately true. Keeping a hostage is one thing, if you think you need one, but these insinuations are _mean_. Nothing else to it.

Ghift looks up at him and again he is quiet for a while. Their eyes only keep contact for an eyeblink then his gaze travels down his bare body with dismaying intent. Folth can’t help imagining a little what he must see; a nearly nude decently attractive man (as he'd like to fancy), all chained-up and helpless. Helpless. He can see the expression on his face as he makes it, lips pulling back in a grimace, eyes narrowing, shining. Panic hammers in his throat. The image he imagines only distresses him, but it must do something for Ghift.

Their eyes meet again. There’s an expression in them no one has ever looked at Folth with.

“You can’t imagine how good you look right now,” Ghift says. His voice is hungry, like the thing in his eyes. “With your toes touching, finally, now, demure. Even your bruises. I put this off to now because the idea of them drove me crazy. I hadn’t given them to you myself. Nobody _has_ had you, have they?”

“Ghift, stop.” This can’t possibly be leading up to what he thinks it is. It can’t. Ghift was a little strange, but not a bad person. He might be one now, but---surely not capable of one of the most immoral things he can imagine. “Please,” he adds, and the even level of his voice is a relief.

“You were always beautiful, you know.” His hands palm up his bruised legs until his fingers slip in under the legs of his underwear. They reach up nearly to the hip, the soft crease of skin leading to the pubic area, so high he can’t help shivering. “Like my brother, you sparkle in the sunlight… like a precious stone. But I knew him in the dark eventually, and loved him that way even more. In the dark, in the fear and pain, is where the inside must shine even more.” He retreats enough to grab his leg-holes and pulls. Folth closes his eyes tight.

“I think you can shine the same way.”

He can feel his eyes stuck to him, making him slimy and cold with dread and hot with embarrassment. His heart is thumping in his ears.

Ghift whispers next to his temple, so quiet below the rushing blood he almost misses it. “I’m glad you’re ashamed.” The shackles jangle again, his fingers brushing Folth’s wrist. “You used to drive me to distraction when we were children. I always covered up because I knew I was scrawny and too-pale, but every day there wasn’t snow on the ground I saw your bare legs and arms. Shapely. Healthy. Summer one year you went through a series of spaghetti-strap shirts, and made a final hurrah of a pair of shorts too small for you. When you sat I could see it digging into your waist, your thighs, and the tiny roll of flesh the pressure made. I barely paid attention to anything you said, I was so busy trying not to look like I was looking at you.”

“If you have a crush on me, we can _talk_ about---oh.” The shackles fall from his wrists. A hope rises in his chest that maybe this was all an overboard attempt to get his attention, and they can work it out after all. Of course, there’s still the matter of lawful punishment, but maybe things can get better before they get even worse. There won’t be any more casualties. Erst can be put to rest.

“No ‘oh’. It’s just so you can turn over without pulling your shoulders more. Do it.”

Mutiny would be fruitless but is nonetheless tempting. He can turn over fine, probably, but he’s afraid of leading this situation even further along by his own hand. It’d be better if Ghift turned him over by force. Still, the others… Kagerou… if he makes him mad…

Even though his heart and mind are screaming at him not to, he rolls over slowly on his achy arms and shoulders, until he is flat on his belly.

“Bruised back here, too. I wonder if they kept beating you even after you went down.”

For the first time Folth sense something like hesitance from Ghift, in the moment’s pause between that statement and his hands chilling his nape and the top of his butt. The one on his nape glides firmly down between his shoulder blades, into the curve of his midback, and back up to the dimples above his butt (not that he’s ever looked at his butt, but Kagerou used to tease him about them). “Do you feel me? Does that hurt?”

“Yes… not any more than everything else.”

He braces himself for a squeeze or some kind of assault when he puts both his hands on his buttocks, but he’s barely holding them.

“You loved Erst, didn’t you?”

Desperately. First love, puppy love, hero worship, whatever the term, he had it. For the past ten years he still nurtured those feelings in his heart, persisting even when he saw what Ghift had made of him. But admitting it seems risky, with Ghift’s increasingly probable feelings for him.

The silence drags on so long it becomes an affirmation. Ghift chuckles. “I used to hate it, but I can’t blame you. I loved him too.” His hands drag down his buttcheeks to the backs of his thighs and drop hard off the sides, thumping the mattress. “And he _adored_ you, a boy as lively and sweet as he. You don’t know what living with him was like for me.”

Folth hears his shoes tapping to the foot of the bed. Something clicks.

“He was elusive past the age I needed him to care for me. Always out to see his friends, going to houses, sports games. And then away for school. He never had time for me.”

He sucks in a breath; something cool and wet drizzles on his back. Then hands are back on him, pushing it over his shoulders, and down both sides of his spine. Oil? Something for the bruising? Ghift’s technique for applying is so forceful it’d hurt even without his battered muscles, but the way it gets right into him is a little pleasant.

“I walked the halls and rooms of our mansion for any sign of him. A whiff of his soap, or just to see his shadow on a wall. I didn’t know what to make of his resentment then, for me, or our family.” His voice in recalling these moments turns low and bitter. “I did whatever I could think of to gain his attention.”

Another click. He squeezes his butt while palming it, and something twinges painfully in the right cheek, hopefully just another goose-egg.

“I cried. I intruded on his attempts of isolation. I fought with him. Whatever scrap I could beg from him seemed transient, worthless. Then, finally I…”

Took up the Brattern legacy.

The manhandling continues down his thighs and calves, pinching into his soles. They jerk with the pressure, as though it caused some kind of electrical tension to release through them.

“Erst… was it ten years ago then that you…?”

“Yes,” Ghift answers brusquely, then continues in a fonder tone, “that was when I made him mine.”

A Netherbeing. But Folth does not speak the word, only mouths it sadly. To see such a vibrant man reduced to that putrid pile of goo hurt in a way none of Ghift’s other crimes had. “You loved him. In that sort of way?”

“Not merely as a brother. Yes.”

Folth digests this in silence as Ghift comes back up to his shoulders, working down one arm then the other, fingers twitching with the same release his feet had. As children he had now and then clung both to him and his older brother, but they seemed merely moments of affection from a generally taciturn personality, so Folth had never thought much of it. So that’s how he felt. Take love and a need for approval, mixed with absent parents and the weight of one’s heritage, and it might be enough to mess any kid up.

Did Erst know, before or while the Nether consumed him? Does he know it now, with whatever remains of his mind in there?

He becomes aware after a few seconds that Ghift is standing by him again, hands-off and breath a little fast. It makes him self-conscious again, but it has its own bittersweetness. His body roughly aches even more from being so roughly manipulated; all of his sore spots are singing. But so are all the spaces in between. Blood courses just under the surface of his skin, racy, warm, alive, a far cry from the weighted body he woke up with. “Why?”

“For your bruising and swelling. It really is much worse than your front… I tended to your bleeding when they first brought you in, but I didn’t want you too healthy too soon. Besides, there’s a kind of romance in healing the old-fashioned way, don’t you think?”

“It’s just more convenient for you,” he mumbles.

“Well, I won’t deny that.”

Folth watches warily through one eyelid cracked open when he hears a shuffling sound. Ghift divests himself of his coat, allowing his hair to curl loosely around his shoulders. He’d allowed himself a little cautious optimism that nothing overtly sexual was going to happen, and is back on edge. If something does happen he’s not sure what he can do except give in, for his friends’ sake. He can’t watch him up past eye-level to the head of the bed, though.

“Stiff?”

His fingers are lukewarm now, still a little wet, on his nape.

“Yeah.”

“I want you to be able to see me always. If it’s not better in another week, I’ll fix something up.”

“Mhmm.”

They’re working into him again, on either side at the base of his skull, pressing and rubbing in tiny circles. The initial soreness melts into something still tender, but vibrating in the area with a fuzzy sweetness. His neck muscles are being massaged from old jerky to a buttery-smooth tenderloin.

He hums. Just a few short notes of pure satisfaction, gained even in a situation like this. Ghift pauses for all of a millisecond before continuing down his spinal column with the little circles, continuing the fuzzy sensation through the middle to his mid-back. The soreness fades little by little and turns background and a lovely basenote to the honey.

Then the heel of his palms set into his shoulders and push down his back, widening the sensation as his shoulder blades are forced to lower and spread. His fingers come back up his sides, brushing his pectorals before his palm sets again (this time, into the trapezius muscle toward the end of his collarbone), and repeat.

His whole back is filling with heavenly cotton.

“Ghift…”

“Yes?” His voice is thick again, dangerous. Shouldn’t encourage him.

“My shoulders… in the muscle.”

The grip at the end of the stroke reverses, pointing his fingers toward the collar, and most importantly, into the meat of the trapezius. They press in, pull up, kneading into him like a piece of hamburger.

“Like that?”

“Yes.” His own voice sounds disturbingly breathy to him. He and Kagerou have exchanged little shoulder massages with not near so dire an effect. Strange days, he thinks again. And given all that’s happened, no surprise if his body circuits got criss-crossed or overloaded or who knows what.

“You must know by now,” Ghift says after a few blissful minutes of this. Then his hands are on the prowl again and Folth is disgusted to find himself hungrily awaiting where they go. “I love you too.” They lay on their edges, palms facing inward, again on either side of his spine. When they swim down the curve of Folth’s back it turns his answer into ‘I guh-essed’. It’s a different more electrifying pleasure (pleasure?) compared to the motions that were making him so sweetly relaxed. “I loved the both of you. You had no idea, did you?”

Another jolt, right through his skeleton, tingling through his ribs. “N-no.”

“If you did… could you have loved me, too?”

“I don’t know… Ghift, I was ten.”

“You loved my brother,” he says, some of the warmth in his voice cooling. “But of course you did. Erst was a prodigy, the pride of the town. And I was just a boy.”

His fingers coming up his sides skim the rims of his areolae. Then he is back to his thumbs and little circles down his spine, vertebrae by vertebrae. Something unties and relieves such a knot that in the high of his skin he can’t hold back a moan.

Ghift mutters his name and is quiet for so long as his thumbs work up and down his back that maybe his name was all he wanted to communicate. “Are you hard?”

“No,” he mumbles back. It’s not in denial of his arousal (he can’t tell one way or the other with his body so floaty). The situation, the question itself, is what he wants to deny. The question is a full cup falling off an edge that you don’t react to in time enough to grab. The start of a break and an awful lot of mess. It makes this touch that he had begun to more or less accept into something tainted. “Don’t.”

“I’m hard,” Ghift says, voice heavy, different from the light, high-pitched flirtations Folth is used to from girls. “I’ve wanted to touch you like this for so long. I wanted to see you _liking_ me touching you.” He places his palms flat on his shoulder blades and pulls and pushes on them to force separation from all the other muscles in his back. Just a few seconds in each direction, five or maybe ten, the tension increasing until release, like climax. “And I want to see you not liking it, too.”

“Please, you can’t. We were best friends.” The stupid breathiness in his voice is undermining him but he feels so good he can’t force it away, light and fuzzy and tingling, even with the mud. Would it make it better or worse if he looked him eye to eye? If he cried? He might do that anyway. The heat in his upper body is filling his eyes too. “You’re better than this.”

“I’m a man in love.”

When Ghift passes him to move to the end of the bed, he makes no attempt to meet his eyes; his own, he closes entirely. He doesn’t want to see whatever state his slacks are in. And yet there’s a thrill in doing it. While he knows that other men share the equipment he has, he has never thought about it---or, to use a better turn of phrase, been confronted by it. For the years he’s known them, he’s never been truly aware of Abert or Kagerou having a penis. But in this room, right next to him, is a man with an erection, caused by him, for him.

“These cute dimples here---has anyone ever seen them?” His fingers nestle in the spot between, right above the cleft of his buttocks. A little pressure causes that terribly warm glow in his body to connect with the start of his pelvis.

“My parents, probably…”

“Never Kagerou?”

“We were kids,” he tries not to plead. “And he was even younger than me.”

“Or Erst?”

“Why would Erst---”

He grabs his poor, sore sides, and pulls hard up to his spinal cord. It hurts but even so there is releasing, untying, a freeflow in his body that makes it difficult to keep his throat closed shut.

“We used to read a lot as kids.” The huskiness in Ghift’s voice has brought it to a near-whisper. “Imagine one of those occasions in your room.”

The idea of his childhood home is a comfort, is a pain in his heart. Home, tiny and loving, the bed he grew up in. He doesn’t want to think of it at a time like this.

“It’s late.”

The sky outside the window darkens. His lamp is out to read by. The words of his storybook are just visible in the mellow light.

“I’m home sick,” Ghift continues, kneading his ass now like Folth has kneaded dough, twinging the goose-egg far-off below him. His words become immediate background knowledge in the picture running through his head. “But Erst is with you. Baby-sitting.”

His parents are out for the evening, and Erst---he thinks of Erst as he used to be and wants to cry. He remembers the last time he hugged him around his thighs, he missed him so much. He wishes he had the courage to kiss him when he bent his face to his. He’d rather listen to his stories all night than read, but he must be tired---Folth tries to drag himself out of the fantasy because he knows, knowing Ghift as he is now, that it can’t be leading to anything good. But he has missed him so much and his body is so far away that everything in his head stands out with clarity.

He can feel him in the room with him, his warmth, smell his cologne in the air. This comforting stuffiness in his chest from knowing he’s being looked after.

“You know he’s there even without touching him, don’t you? That’s just how Erst is. You have to notice him. Just like you. And he _does_ ; always has.” The kneading comes to a slow stop and somewhere Folth hopes against hope that it is the end of this. “You’re wearing your favorite nightshirt, so faded from washing it’s lilac, little boy boxers grey with age.”

A combination he had worn through a good chunk of his childhood, until he finally outgrew them both. He hadn’t guessed Ghift would remember, but come to think of it, he supposes he knows what Ghift usually wore to bed too. An old blue nightshirt and sleep shorts.

“You were careless laying down, and you always move your legs back and forth when you lay on your belly. Your clothes have gathered up to your inner thigh.”

His legs are bare and naked, something that makes him uncomfortable in his real mind, but as a kid he wouldn’t care much. Why, he’s too invested in his book to even notice, really.

“You look like pedobait, don’t you?”

He almost gags on his spit, but before he can begin to deny anything (he’s just a _kid_ no matter how high his things have rucked up), Ghift continues.

“You don’t know that you do, but anyone seeing you would. Erst does. He sees your pink feet, the soft creasing flesh behind your knees, and your chubby thigh-flesh, the peek of a buttcheek through your leg holes. Taunting. Wanting. Baiting.”

“Erst wouldn’t---” he breaks through, voice cracking “---he’d never---”

“Interrupt me like that again and I’m turning your little friend to mud,” Ghift threatens sharply. A flurry of panicked thoughts go through Folth’s mind (does he mean it? would he do it?) and decides not to risk it. He already knew he might have to give in to something, and this nasty bit of play seems to be the method he’s decided on.

In the silence of his obedience, Ghift’s right hand comes little by little to the center of his ass. When he speaks he sounds as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all. “The only way to deal with pedobait is to give it what it wants. He comes down by you and---”

I don’t notice, I’m so absorbed in the tale I’m reading. Erst’s hand on the back of my thigh is a barely noticeable sensation at first, then it sinks in

(!!erst is touching me!!)

which of course he had before, on my head or shoulders, but never in such an intimate place. I lose my place with the gooseflesh creeping up my back, but I pretend to keep reading. I’ve had the most massive crush on him for as long as I can remember and don’t want to creep him out by acting too excited.

I would be happy to stay like this forever.

But after a little longer his hand goes up higher and I’m aware for the first time how much my clothes have pulled up. I’ve had baths with his little brother when we were younger, but I’ve never been so bare with him.

“Then his fingers go up inside your underwear... and you’re still good and quiet, aren’t you? You don’t know what he’s about, but it’s nice to have him touching you.”

Folth groans in reluctant agreement. The erection he knows he has now is the most morbidly embarrassing thing he’s ever felt. He can’t believe that it could happen while thinking of Erst taking advantage of him. Erst isn’t that kind of person, he keeps telling himself. What the hell is wrong with you? You wouldn’t have wanted that. You don’t want _this_.

“And he touches you right... here.”

Between his buttcheeks, the seam of skin between his testicles and anus. The inability to give more than a token resistance by shaking his head lays creepy-crawly all over his body. A thumb’s worth of pressure comes down in the middle of the seam, rubbing almost in a rocking motion.

The pages have blurred into nothing. No one is supposed to touch me there, are they? That’s why they’re called ‘privates’. But it’s Erst touching. And I know Erst would never try to hurt me. So it must be okay.

Erst says nothing to explain himself. All I can hear is the light sound of his breathing.

His thumb is more than pressing against me; it’s pressing **into** me. It makes for a weirdly pleasant feeling that I can’t explain. Like there’s a button inside just on the other side. When it stops I try not to acknowledge missing it in any way, but I think my butt twitches just a bit. Something that he must notice, because he touches me again, right there but higher, still pressing, still into---

He is not cognizant of his whimpering of Erst’s name. From his perspective, Ghift’s sudden, forceful intrusion is another act of meanness. It’s just one finger so it doesn’t hurt badly, especially with the massage oil, but it stings and even worse somehow is the disappointment.

(the real Erst would be gentler)

Does this make him not a virgin? he wonders distantly. Or does it have to be a penis for that?

The heat rises again in his eyes at the possibility that he isn’t, or won’t be, soon enough. His virginity wasn’t something he particularly treasured, but he held it in high enough sentimental value to not want to lose it like this.

The thumb switches for a finger, something apparently to explore him with more dexterity, given how much it wiggles around. Folth has self-explored enough to know how to stimulate his prostate, but it doesn’t seem interested in that part of his body. It’s like the massage had been. It opens him around all the directions of the clock and his stupid fool body relaxes into it, buzzing in his pelvis like his back had, allowing his mind to wander deeper with the next given line of narration.

“You love it.”

I love it. I know in some way, some deep instinctual sense of foreboding, that I shouldn’t. My head is so full and heavy I let it fall to rest on my book.

Just a finger, but he’s so big inside me I feel like a teacup. One wrong move, and blammo. We’re molded so tightly together I can even make out the ridge of his nail bed.

Somehow he still finds the space to move and swirl his digit all around inside me. There’s a spot that makes my insides glow when he brushes it, and I think he must know, must, to be doing this to me, but he plays with me, molding and pressing like when I play with clay. He touches and prods and stretches everywhere until I’m all drip-dropped with sweat. My enjoyment must be obvious by now. I’m hardly telling him to stop. Wasn’t this what I was asking for, laying here with my butt hanging out?

(pedobaitjailbaithowdyougetthosebruises)

My wiener is throbbing. For a moment I think I have to pee, but there’s no heaviness in my bladder. My fingers tent on the book’s pages, pressing down hard on the fingertips. If mom and dad saw me like this, they might hate Erst—but they would hate me too.

The paper is so cool and my face is so hot. He’s stroking that place that feels good in little pats of movement, like stroking the head of a hamster. Each time my lower body shivers on its own. I don’t know if he’s in me up to the knuckle but I find myself hoping he isn’t. I hope he has more to give me.

Then it holds still against that spot and my breath holds with it. The pressure increases, backs off, then back in hard, right in that spot, there, right there---

A strange quivering vibrates out from the inside of my butt, making my body jitter. I can’t think of anything but this white-hot melting of all my senses. I can’t think even that far---I merely experience it as it happens, rolling through my limbs. Erst has made me feel so unbelievably good that greater love surges in my chest for him and it doesn’t matter that I know my parents wouldn’t like this. My entire existence has narrowed to my body and his.

Ghift slaps his ass, just hard enough to sting, just hard enough to bring him back to reality, where he wishes he wasn’t, especially now. He becomes acutely aware of the drool slicking the corner of his mouth, his itchy warm face, and his pulsing pelvic region. That he was brought to one of the most all-encompassing orgasms of his life while thinking of his childhood crush molesting him.

The weight of it crashes down and for a moment he hates himself bitterly. Worse yet, this climax occurred during his real-world rape. A part of his mind attempts to comfort himself the way he’d comfort someone else in the same situation but it’s completely different. It just is. He’s not a civilian. There has to be something, some way that eluded him…

“Enough afterglow. Lift your ass for me, as much as your back will allow.”

Folth emptily obeys. Resistance means thinking. He has no room for thinking right now. The small of his back groans in protest but he manages to present himself just a little off the sheets.

“You came,” Ghift says indignantly. “You squeezed down on me so much you were cutting off my circulation.” Inside him his finger goes around and around, circling his sensitized prostate. “You’re not actually a kid again, you know. You’re supposed to ejaculate.”

“Bwuh?” He leans his forehead into his forearms and manages to force his back into arching enough he can look down at himself. His dick isn’t clean. The head and his bellybutton are all wet with pre-come or prostate milk. But there are none of the thick strings of semen. “I dunno…”

“And here I was, looking forward to seeing you make a mess of yourself.” That finger keeps going in mindless circles, so close to where they’d be so terribly good---

Folth shakes the thought off uneasily, and lowers himself back into presenting position. _What the hell is wrong with me?_ Just ignore it. But even if he decides that’s what he wants to do his body pops, shudders, when the circle grows a little tighter and he feels so swollen inside somehow, all cushy and warm, the way it could be when he was in a very self-indulgent mood and could spend over an hour in his bed readying and teasing himself until he felt as soft as filet mignon.

“Have you ever tried to come more than once in a session? I can do it if I want to, and when I think of you and Erst, I usually do...” His face is so close Folth can feel his breath on his butt, which brings about a vague anger and shame. Bad enough that he’s doing this. Does he really need a first-class ticket to it? “But unless I’m exceptionally aroused, it’s an uphill battle. I have to fight for it.” His finger vibrates his prostate for a second, one short measly second. Folth still gasps. “Assuming you came before, as I’m certain you did, I think you can go again.” His voice drops into a coo. “Any man would be _honored_ to have a cute boy like you having their first come for them, on them, so of course Erst...”

“Nooo—” Folth groans, before he can remind himself of the mud. “Not Erst. Please.”

“You should be happy I’m doing you a favor. You never got to have him, after all.” That sentence implies something strange but he’s in no state to piece it together. The thought of Erst excites him but when he comes back down he’ll know that he was bad, that he was wrong, no matter the circumstances. “Now be good.”

My belly hurts from clenching so hard. Erst is still touching the sweet spot inside me, or around it actually, but his finger is so big he’s stirring up my insides no matter what he does. I’m still trying to be quiet even though my heavy breathing would give me away. I’m not sure why I’m bothering; no one could ever ignore this feeling. It’s too much. So obviously I know what’s happening. I’m not napping now anymore than I was reading a few moments ago.

That weird feeling is already rising in me again. It looms, the pleasure it promises is a threat. If it crashes into me again I don’t think I can keep quiet and whatever illusion I’m trying to keep up will be completely dispelled. I’m afraid and yet---it’s because of Erst, who loves me, who is giving me this wave, even though this pedobait body started all of this.

I resign to it as the wave draws up height. I can make it through. I have to.

Erst solidly thumbs that spot, jiggling and digging into it like he could thrust right through me and into my penis. My penis and the button-spot inside me swell and burst with radiating light and for a moment, as it spreads through the rest of me, my throat is blessedly numb and locked. I’m thankful my face is hidden. I can’t imagine the stupid expression I’m making. My teeth grit, my lips pull back, my eyes water as they roll in their sockets, and a bit of an immediate headache comes on from my eyebrows scrunching. Stupid, lewd, stupidly lewd. My parents could never hate Erst if they saw the expression I know I’m making. Because I’m pedobait and I like it. I’m the one to hate.

Then the lock on my throat breaks and I’m moaning out Erst’s name in a warble in time with my body’s jitters. Even his name feels good, especially like this, with this tone. Did I really think I was in love with him before? I’m falling more, and more, and more, no landing in sight.

The water level in my body finally recedes, leaving me barely aware and half-drowned. Erst pulls my shorts and underwear down and I know I should be embarrassed to be butt-naked. But this is nothing compared to what I just felt; what we went through together. What he gave to me. The air is nice on my sweaty thighs, actually.

Erst sticks his finger in me, a comfortable fit now, then another, and we’re back to the beginning. My hole stretches tight like a rubberband about to be snapped. It stirs up a remnant of the pleasure from before but I’m tired. My belly tightens painfully in a near-convulse when he brushes my button-spot while testing my resistance, again pulling in and out and all around.

“E-Erst...” That makes me feel awkward for a second, but I was moaning it a minute ago. No point, cover blown. He knows what I am, and is still here. He accepts me. He is nice, so nice... just like his fingers, but my insides are sore. He’s thrusting them into me, that spot, I want to tell him to stop but I don’t dare to. I’m pedobait, after all---none of this is really up to me.

So I try to be good. And I think I mostly succeed, even though I’m panting so loud it’s audible all across the house. I’m still. Receptive. The pleasure is so strained and edgy I take it more as punishment than reward. I want to cringe away from it but Erst does not stop so I can’t either.

The sharp sensation of my button being pressed rounds out as it spreads and envelopes me again from toes to scalp. It’s still alarming. I think of the wave hitting me again and sob in my throat. Erst is pounding his fingers into me and it hurts, it’s good, my barometric pressure is lowering especially in my belly---my bladder, I realize. “Erst---w-wait.” I don’t want to tell him I’m going to pee if he doesn’t. I’m supposed to be a big boy. “Please stop!”

Erst doesn’t answer but the squelch of his fingers inside me sounds like one. Go ahead, it says. Pee all over your bedroom floor. No one will be disappointed, because who expects better from boys who pervert good men?

I reach down behind me, as if I’d have the courage to try to make him stop even if I could grab his hand or wrist. But I have to show the appearance of effort. I have to have tried. My weenie is tingling and heavy like lead. Each button-press inside me fills it with more and more pee---until it finally bursts. The smell of ammonia is very faint compared to that burst, and how it actually seems to grow larger and larger as it drains, like the sudden weight that comes during an early morning pee. The _fsss_ of my urine exacerbates the terrible pleasure filling my groin.

For a moment I am so overcome, physically, mentally, that I lay in my shameful mess and---

the idea bounces off his real brain, and he has to struggle to look. It’s even harder to move now that he’s overcome with post-orgasm languor but even in his defeated state, laying in blankets stained with his own pee is too much. So he pulls his belly up and sees with relief that he has merely ejaculated. Like, a lot. Strings of semen are plastered all over his stomach and the sheet below him. His softening cock aches with all the excitement it’s been forced through.

“Had to check, did you?” Ghift sounds a few steps from laughter. “The mind is a powerful thing.”

Folth relaxes back down. Still gross, but at least he hasn’t wet himself. “Is that what you wanted?” Part of his brain, a good chunk of it, is yelling at him for asking a leading question like that---what the hell are you thinking? But Ghift seems to have his mind made up on what he wants to do, and in that case, he’d prefer to be able to brace himself.

“Is that what...? Oh, we’re not done here yet, Folth.”

As he had feared. “Then...”

The fingers leave him and he tenses in anticipation of something else taking their place. Ghift grabs one side of his hip and pulls, an obvious prompt for him to turn over. He follows through on the movement for lack of a better option, though now there’s no hiding what has been done to him.

He surveys himself with some bemusement. It has to be the biggest load of his life. A lake of it is smeared on his belly, and there’s a milky-white glazing all over his glans. Some of it has dribbled down to stand out brightly against the fox fur of his pubic hair. All of this, caused by finally ejaculating after his childhood friend anally masturbated him to three orgasms. In other (more consensual) circumstances, he might be pleased. As it is he just feels extremely weird about himself.

“It’s such a treat to finally see you like this.” Ghift leans in closer, bringing his face into more prominent focus, thankfully, something to distract the eyes from below the belt. His flushed cheeks stand out feverishly on his otherwise fair skin. “How long does refractory usually take you?”

“Huh? I don’t exactly… test it.” Just once makes him so sleepy he has no interest in anything further. This situation he’s in is too tense for even him to conk out, but he senses the same deadening of his nerves, the quiet that follows the excitement and high of climax.

“It doesn’t really matter. I just wanted to know how much I’m pushing you past your limits.”

“L-limits?” Surely, no—he thinks for the barest of seconds then his fingers are around his dick, squeezing at the base in pulses, on and off, and he thinks desperately of Kagerou, please, anything but Kagerou, to stop himself from trying to push him off. But he _can’t_ , it hurts so much, he has to fist his hands into his pillow to redirect their energy somewhere.

“Aw,” Ghift says mildly. His eyes glimmer with amusement. “Is that too much? Poor baby! I haven’t even started yet.”

“Ghi—ft!”

His grip travels slowly up his shaft, the pressure never relenting. Folth can only look by forcing his eyes open into hot, misty slits. “Please! Please stop!”

Ghift hums unconcernedly, squeezing, pulling, until the head of his cock glimmers with fresh pre-come. “You learned some bad habits after Erst had his way with you, didn’t you? So when you received a cute little boy of your own to look after---” His thumb digs into his meatus, smushing that sugary bead into the cleft, a sensation so tortuously strong Folth’s legs jerk up and try automatically to block him off. It, and the terrible knowledge of where it is Ghift intends to tread next, makes him wail, the heels of his palms pressing into his eyeballs.

There is no mention of these small gestures of resistance. Perhaps they are recognized as what they are, and it is only a more intentional rebellion that will incense him.

“He’s a cute boy… he looks maybe four years younger than you? Quite a trick when he’s only been alive and aware for ten. So he must have been practically a toddler when you got your hands on him.”

Kagerou is so cute! He had thought so even then. So small and cute! Even as children he would pat his head and lead him around by hand. But the idea of anything more had never occurred to him. He was in every way his ‘little brother’.

“You would have had to help him bathe. And you remember all those games Erst taught you to play. Wouldn’t it be fun to teach him the same things?”

Folth shakes his head so hard his brain rattles around in his skull.

“Of course it would be. And the way he’s looking at you, you know he’s curious about your more adult body. Well, relatively adult. I’m sure you hadn’t even been growing hair yet.” There’s a few moments of awkward respite when he stops stroking to pull at his pubes. “The first time I heard the word ‘firecrotch’, I thought of you” Folth cringes at such a term being used to describe his anatomy “I wondered how much darker it would be than the hair on your head. I wondered if it would be silky or frizzy. It doesn’t look like you trim, at least not obviously so. Maybe a little neatening. Say, does Kagerou know any of that?”

“No,” he grits between his teeth. “We were never like that.”

“’Never’ is a big word. And you can only speak for your side.” A little tempo settles in place, the combined prickly tug and release of his pubic hair now in time with his penis. “Anyway. You’re both bare. He’s amiable to your suggestion of exploring in the tub…” Then he presses his dick flat against his lower belly and squeezes it between flesh, belly and palm, traveling from balls to the glans. Folth groans on each circuit, thighs twitching; the first and last of the stroke both are miserable, to have his testicles pushed into his body, and the head for an instant perilously close to imploding with pressure. “He’s a cute little boy, just like you still are, but even more so. Because you know about forbidden things, don’t you?”

The intent is obviously that he should dip inside himself again and see the situation with hypnotic clarity. But his mind refuses to retreat. Perhaps it is because his body has lost that cozy, floaty feeling, because he is filthy, disgusted, but he thinks it is mostly his own selfishness. It is one thing to be acted upon, another to act. It is a disservice to poor Erst to think of him as a criminal pervert, and unbearable to put himself in the same place. The intent is so obvious his mind inevitably tries, but each time it hits a wall. He can go back only as far as seeing Kagerou as he was then.

“You want to teach Kagerou the things Erst taught you,” Ghift continues. He’s smiling a little, eyes half-lidded. “A great many, to be sure.” How can it not pain him to besmirch others like this? “At this point you are more erotic than most adults. There’s sensuality in your every movement, the way you cross your legs when you sit, the tilt of your head when you speak… you reek of someone who knows and loves sex.”

Folth doesn’t even have the energy to fantasize something else. He has to hear these words about himself and what they mean. He can’t hide.

Ghift smacks his cock against his palm like a broken rattle, causing a wet splat-splat-splat sound in time with his body jerking. The sensation is intense, no longer just pain, or even pleasure, exactly. It’s just there, sharp, unable to be taken peaceably into his body. “You start simple. Even simpler than Erst had with you. After he’s all scrubbed and wet, you sit him on the edge of the bathtub.” The fingers of his ejaculate-slimed hand spread out like a spider’s legs. Their pads encircle Folth’s corona, pressing, releasing, driving up the tension so high that when the hand encloses, gripping his glans like an orange on a juicer, he makes the first completely sexual noise he recalls making throughout this whole thing. An explosive _ah_ that stops as soon as it starts but is nonetheless clear in what it means.

There is no hate in it, no pain, or anger. Pure sex.

Ghift’s smile widens. When their eyes meet the tip of his tongue appears briefly by the corner of his mouth, giving him the look of a hungry dog eyeing a ribeye steak. “He’s pure, isn’t he? Untouched. Clean. Part of you wants him to always be that way… but part of you wants to make him dirty, too. Like you.” He squeezes. Folth almost clicks his teeth on his tongue to keep back another noise, but it reverberates audibly in his throat, his mouth.

His eyes water with hot, frustrated tears. This can’t be happening. He can’t be reacting this way. Words fill his head again, words that are supposed to absolve him _it’s not your fault_ but there are not enough words in the world to build his heart up.

“You touch him soft and slow, because you want him to enjoy it like you enjoyed it. You engage in _foreplay_. You kiss his neck, suck his nipples… what color are they? Apricot? Cherry? Peach?”

Folth tries to wait out the expectant pause until, unhappily, he sees an answer is actually wanted from him. “Pink,” he says flatly. Mostly skin-toned, with just a little wash of color that maybe technically makes them pink, thus the answer. But there’s no need to get that involved in his reply unless Ghift wants to double-check or something. Please don’t.

“Pink,” Ghift says, sounding pleased. “To match his red eyes.” His fingers keep squeezing, and each time, Folth stifles a noise inside his chest. “Then his thighs, his belly button. This sort of attention from you is so new he gets hard before you actually touch him. He doesn’t know what he wants, but he wants it bad.”

“Stop, stop,” he murmurs weakly, inoffensive, not wanting to put either of them in danger but unable to help his mouth. “I’d rather Erst, rather Erst than this.”

“You explore him between his legs, the tiny penis and sack, with clever hands, experienced little whore that you are, though you’ve only had the one john. Even if he was reluctant you’d know how to make it good.” His fingers tent again, rubbing his pre-come into his skin right along the frenulum.

“Haah—Ghift!”

“Oh, don’t worry. He won’t grow up hating you. Just like you didn’t hate Erst. Rather, his reaction is like yours. Gratitude, and love—it must be wonderful to be taken into hand,” his voice softens, until he nearly whispers his next sentence. “Led into adulthood.”

He keeps rubbing and rubbing and there’s no halfway point to it now, his dick is on fire with pleasure. A traitorous tingling is scrambling up in his groin, sweet but all-wrong like a beautiful song sung off-key. It is poison inside him making him hot and shaky, causing those scraps of sound. Bile rises in the back of his throat and sits like a sour stone. His toes keep clenching when he’s not paying attention to them.

“I imagine you know his trills better than I can describe. They are how you know you are succeeding. His knees jitter for you. He has cute knees, I’m sure. I think most little boys do, even when they’re all scabby. Especially yours. You stroke, stroke, oh, his back arches him into you and---” he finally grabs his cock instead of toying around with it and jerks it in hard, rapid strokes like Folth had spent the majority of his adolescence doing and the result is the same when he’s so ready. Stars behind his eyes, a rush of noise in his head. It’s so inevitable he can’t fight it and maybe when it’s done he’ll **finally** leave him alone.

“Haah—mhm!” With his eyes closed he doesn’t have to see it but it only brings out the feel even more, every detail of his muscles flexing so clear even his clenching abdominals are sexual. The mess on his belly thickens and warms with a new load and he GOT OFF didn’t he, even in a situation like this, in his own mind, what a disgrace.

“Yes, just like that, only not as wet—if you’re going to come all over my hand, you should at least look at me.”

He can’t but he’s afraid of not doing it. So he takes in one deep lungful of air to hold onto and sees the last few dribbles of milk being coaxed out of his dick. Much of it has run a river over Ghift’s fingers, and seeing that is even worse. It’s proof. “G-ghift, please, it’s donnmmmm----”

done, except it’s not, Ghift won’t let him be done. He tries automatically to close his legs and just as automatically opens when the gesture is met with a bright flare of pain when Ghift pinches the inner muscle in his thigh. It’s less than the agony in his poor dick being still mercilessly jerked off, but it reminds him of what he’s not allowed to do.

Think of Kagerou, think of what needs to be done, but god why doesn’t he just light him on fire and be done with it? “Ghift, please, pleease!”

“I think you have one more left in you. You’re a big boy, after all. You can do whatever is needed of you.”

“Noooo, nonono, oh god,” it HURTS so much, the heat in his eyes finally overflows and fills the corners of them with suffocating lava-like liquid before dripping into his ears. “Ghift, I beg, I beg!”

“He begs!” Ghift snickers breathlessly, shoulders trembling. His hand doesn’t falter for a second. The other rubs into the sore spot he’d pinched. “As well you might, monster, why don’t you just think of it as your punishment? You’ve already orgasmed to the thought of being molested---”

“Ghiiift!”

“---but to do it to the thought _of_ molesting? What do you think that says about you?”

Nothing! Nothing! He’d never! Oooh but his cock is so wet and feels so good and there’s so much come on his cock that has to be all he’s seeing when little beads go flying off on every stroke up, he can’t be making more pre-come, can’t be, no, this is just one long weird aftershock, not a build-up. “Shtop, pleeassse, I, I,” he what? Not gonna explode, impossible. His back manages to arch despite the pain and somehow that fraught tinge of irritation too runs to his groin. “Ahh-hwah! I’mmm---”

“Going to come again? I’ll allow you that.” Ghift stops hand-fucking him, giving him one second where he’s not sure whether he’s more relieved or disappointed and he’d hate to find out which, just to jab his thumb into his meatus.

The shock is so strong that at first Folth doesn’t feel it. It’s like falling down the stairs and only noticing what all hit at the bottom. His thinking brain clouds over and for an instant he is in the same barely existent state he greeted this nightmare with.

Just that instant, like the calm before the storm. Then it breaks and he is painfully aware that Ghift is trying to grind his thumb into his urethra. Never in his life has he ever flat-out _screamed_ for anything but he does it now with his teeth latched into the side of his hand. His body has been so badly barraged it’s coming out of self-defense, nothing to do with him personally, and it’s having it with a vengeance. His lungs burn with the constant pressure of being emptied then breathed only a sliver of life back into but that’s secondary to his dick, throbbing hard enough to burst through the shaft and the blunt needling in his glans. It’s all sloppy-sounding and filthy, he’s never made this much noise touching himself, this wet meaty sound going schlock schlock schlock as what little ejaculate he has left bubbles up around Ghift’s nail.

Ghift croons to him just under that noise. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Does he really think he does?

Folth’s still releasing a few pitiful streamers of come when Ghift releases him. They lack the force to do more than make a dribbly surge out of his reddened piss-slit before running back down the head like the last few smears of icing left from a tray of cake.

I love you. I love you.

Ghift gets onto the bed with him, crawls over him. His stomach drops with dread but he can’t drudge up any actual alarm. That state of nonexistence comes over him again and he thinks, I don’t have to be here for this if I don’t want to. But even in this there might be an opportunity of some kind. And he doesn’t want to run the risk of offending Ghift when he surely notices.

 _I love you_.

There’s something wrong with him. Folth absently marvels over what has now been made totally clear to him. Say it’s because of his upbringing, or lack of one, but it’s true. Did the childhood friend he cherished so much ever exist as he knew him? Or was he always this way, rotted and full of worms, like a bad apple?

Ghift unzips himself from his pants, his self being a purple-red length of meat already creaming at the tip. It is swollen to the point of hugeness, at least to virgin eyes, something impossible to fit smooth or easily. The dread surges. But Ghift does not touch or move him, just stays where he is over his panting chest, one hand on his leg for balance. The other remains firmly on himself, and like this, he masturbates over him.

 _I’ve been raped_ , Folth thinks and almost giggles. They haven’t actually had sex, but he put him through the wringer alright, and is now being insulted at least one more time in the archetypal image of the assailant jerking off over their victim’s lifeless body. He thinks without hoping that maybe this is the final event he has planned for tonight.

“I love you.” Flicks of his pre-come join the lake-sludge drying at the edges on Folth’s belly. “Even while knowing you didn’t love me. Loving you is such sweet agony it made it all worth it. But I couldn’t wait for you to notice me forever.”

“Ghift…” He wants to reach down to his hand. Hold it. The desire surprises him, and he realizes mournfully that he does not hate him even after this assault. Even if Ghift is broken inside so hopelessly that no one can reach him, a large part of him still wants to _try_ , like this is something they can sit down and chat about. He wishes he could love him back, he wishes he believed that would fix him. He can’t but he wants to.

“That’s right. Just say my name. Only look at me.”

“Ghiift…” Should he tell him stop again? He thinks he should, that no one could stand to have this happen to them. But truthfully it’s a relief compared to the other thing. If this is what he wants he can give it. That’s just strategy. Not giving in, or… wanting it.

(would others see it that way too?)

“Folth, I want, I want---”

Him? The world? Everything?

He groans, then shoots his load to join the rest, cream on cream, renewing the raw smell lingering in the air. His face catches Folth’s attention as much as his probably did Ghift’s. Folth doesn’t know what he looks like when he orgasms; it’s not like he does it in front of his bathroom mirror. It can’t be too different in any case but it’s interesting to him how the changed parts of his expression (the knitted brow and snarling upper lip, the feverish flush and sweaty bangs) could pass for intense concentration or effort, and yet, is unmistakably sexual. He’d see it that way even without the context of the dick being milked-out on him.

The silence between them is uncomfortable, at least for him. What will happen next? Does this signal the end, or an act two? Ghift stares into his face and he tries to do the same without really seeing.

“Folth…” He smears his foul, cooling semen on his cheek when he caresses it with the back of his fingers. Try not to cringe. “My… Folth…” Deep affection radiates from him now, believable affection, like it is after all something he truly believes. It mingles strangely with his cold eyes.

He leans in.

Their lips touch.

Folth would have braced himself if he had expected it but his revulsion is so strong and sudden (my first kiss!) that his head jerks away. He knows immediately it is a mistake even without the deadness coming down over Ghift’s face like a mourning veil. His heart stutters and struggles to hammer. “I-I’m sorry. You surprised me.”

“No,” Ghift replies. He doesn’t sound angry either, but still, this close is like being face to face with a dog that might bite at any moment. “You’ve spent too much time with others. You haven’t learned yet.”

“Ghift,” he starts carefully, “how you feel about me has nothing to do with anyone else. Please.”

“It does. It has, since the beginning.” He strokes his cheek again, fingers deep enough to warn him from moving away. A curl of hair falls from behind his ear and tickles his temple. “That’s your only weakness that I can think of. You care about others too much. Your _friends_ were disgusted by me, so you followed suit. They kept you from seeing what I accomplished.”

He doesn’t need anyone to tell him to be disgusted by what he’s done. But would telling him so be strong, or merely suicidal? Would not saying so encourage him into harming his friends? Then again, if he did speak out and made him angry---mightn’t he take that out on them too?

Even remaining silent is a choice, but it’s not like he’s really choosing it. He simply isn’t able to put himself forward.

“This is your first misdemeanor so don’t look at me like that. You’ll be the only one to be punished for it.” He leans in again and kisses his forehead, under his bangs. The smell of him is poisonously thick, sweet, bitter, and woody. “I know you didn’t mean it. You just need to learn to come into your own.”

It’s supposed to be a comfort, he supposes, but he can’t take it that way. Can he really take him at his word? And how long until he decides ‘coming into your own’ means getting rid of what he sees as anchoring him down? But he says, thank you, Ghift, meek and tired as he feels, because all he can do is encourage him into only punishing him.

“Thank me after.” He kisses his forehead again in a hard prolonged _smack_ of flesh. “I’ll give you this night to reflect. We’ll start tomorrow morning.”

Folth is chained again to the headboard, with enough slack that he can turn as he likes without hurting his wrists or shoulders. He’d hoped for a wash even if he wouldn’t be given anything to wear, but apparently stewing in their mess is the plan for tonight. It wouldn’t be worth losing his first kiss for, but it is tempting.

For the rest of the day? night? there are no visitations that he knows of. He retreats easily into sleep. No dreams disturb him. Perhaps he has his physical exhaustion to thank for that. His mental fatigue has to be enough nightmare material for the next few years at least.

The few times he wakes and becomes aware he is so struck by the misery of his condition that he slips again into comforting non-being.


	2. Chapter 2

Jostling. His consciousness rises, tries to retreat. There’s a reason to retreat, though it won’t come to him. He’d prefer not to acknowledge it at all. There’s no good in it.

Then pain, turning the blackness behind his eyes bright red. It brings him abruptly awake; the inside of his head woozes as he attempts to gain his bearings. His cheek is throbbing. Ghift, standing by his bedside. A golden glow haloes his head, making his hair almost the same shade Erst’s had been. Folth blinks hard and realizes one of the sconces on the opposite wall has been lit.

Ah, he realizes. Punishment time.

Is he afraid? Not for himself. Just dreading what he has in mind. However disgraced he might end up his life is almost certainly safe.

Does he hate him yet?

…

“Ghift,” he croaks, then coughs. “Morning.”

“Good morning.” He smiles for a moment, then returns to all business. “I’ve arranged a small breakfast for you, in preparation.”

The thought of food makes him ill. Specifically, the mechanics of it, grinding dry toast or soggy egg into mush between his teeth, the smell and taste of grease, forcing himself to swallow despite the knot in his gut. But he recognizes the necessity. He has gone days without eating already and expended a great deal of energy the other day, with no doubt more to do today.

“I would have liked to give you more, but I don’t know that your stomach can hold much yet. You might throw anything else up.” Ghift nods slightly, a nearly apologetic gesture.

“’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

“Yet.”

Folth tries not to linger on the possibility. He cannot remember ever seriously going hungry before. He’s always been regular about his meals, and never had any personal issues that would keep him from eating. Sleeping so much has probably helped but sooner or later it’s going to catch up with him.

Ghift leaves and returns with a small tray. When he sets it by his side he can see what’s on it; a few squares of toast scraped with butter and strawberries on the side, fresh and plump and out of place for a room like this. There’s a teacup filled with something dark. Tea, by the scent. He is avidly examined in turn, all of his visible marks pressed, the goose egg on his ribs gently manipulated. The dried-over sludge of come on his belly flakes off under Ghift’s thumbnail.

“The swelling has gone down. Don’t you think?”

His bruises have been the last thing he’s been paying attention to. “I’ll give them a feel once I can move my arms again.”

“Yes,” Ghift says. “You will.”

But there is no move to do what he’d think to be the normal thing—his fault for thinking that at all now, he supposes, but still. His wrists remain at collarbone level as Ghift sits beside him, tray moving onto his lap.

“I’m going to get crumbs if I can’t feed myself,” he quietly suggests.

“That’s not for you to be concerned about. Besides. Do you really think it could make you dirtier than you are?”

“Ghift… seriously?” Is this his punishment? To embarrass him by treating him like a child?

“Nothing wrong with a little romance to start the day.” He picks up a strawberry by the leaf and bounces at him in a way that vaguely promises a threat. “It’s all the romance you’re going to get for a while, so you should make the most of it.”

That just sounds like more reason to refuse, but he knows he doesn’t have any meaningful choice here.

The skin is slightly moist; already on his bottom lip he can taste the sweetness it promises, the fullness. Still the knot in his stomach grows tighter. Even taking in something he’d conceptually enjoy almost makes him want to heave. The fond expression on Ghift’s face, like he’s looking on a favored housecat he’s treating to a bite of shrimp, doesn’t help.

The flesh is perfectly ripe, not sour at all. The first nibble almost disintegrates under his teeth. It’s hard to swallow. The rest is fed slowly to him until the leaf is all that’s rest. Then the other, the other, the other. Each time Ghift runs his thumb over his bottom lip for the juice that remains and sucks it into his mouth.

The knot tightens. A wave of nausea makes him grimace.

“I’m here with you,” Ghift says. His voice is meant to be soothing. “I can help get you to where you need to be. You’re anxious, too, I know. It’ll pass.”

It won’t kill him to barf, by itself, but he needs to intake something. Even if he has no choice but to depend on Ghift, can he actually trust him to keep him physically healthy? Not totally; he has let him remain pretty badly off because it was more convenient. Even if he decided to trust him not to let him die or kill him, there’s plenty of things you can do to someone and ways to neglect them while still keeping them alive.

So, ultimately, no, he doesn’t trust him. Sadly this is the position he is in, where all he can do is hope.

The toast is next, bites between it and the tea, a strong malty black that ordinarily goes well with breakfast to energize and sooth for the day ahead. After the first piece they wait a few minutes for more nausea to pass, and Ghift wipes off his neck and mouth for crumbs. By the time his whole plate is finished his stomach is roiling but awakening as well, realizing what it desperately needs. The desire to cram his mouth full becomes its own entity. It is not the healthy appetite that follows a busy afternoon. His belly is gnawing on itself, doubling the need to vomit.

Ghift looks him over a little longer, frowning. Says: you will have to stand now. He unlocks his wrists and guides him up by the shoulder.

It is an effort. Every muscle resists being lifted. Once he has fully sat up he has to blink away a wave of vertigo. Black spots dot his vision. There’s a whine even from the bone-cradle of his hips when he turns his legs to set his feet on the chilly stone floor. His spine groans and squeaks together. It threatens to come apart entirely, pitching him forward onto the floor. He is helped further up, onto his feet.

Ghift snaps his fingers. The door opens and two suited men enter, carrying a rope net of some kind between them. Crimson Chain members. They had seemed on the edge of dissolving entirely, their relationship with Ghift severely strained. Maybe finally obtaining one of their objects worked to patch things up a little, but these men are quiet, shoulders tense, so it must have been a very little indeed. He doubts it has anything to do with his lack of modesty or what has happened to him. As career criminals, they have likely caused situations like his own dozens of times themselves. No. It’s Ghift that makes them nervous.

The net is spread out along the floor. The idea, as it turns out, is to turn Folth into one of those netfuls of fish he has seen sometimes on fishing boats. At least that’s the image that comes to his mind. He sits obediently in the middle when directed to, glad for a chance to at least cover himself. The rope is thick, coarse, and will be more so the longer he is suspended in it but all in all not the worst thing he can think of by far. The end is run through a metal loop attached to the ceiling he hadn’t noticed before, until he is at least seven feet in the air, and knotted off.

It’s like being in a hammock, only much more cramped. The squares of space are big enough he can nearly put a foot through, and probably could with some pushing.

“You might break something if you get caught up in it.” Ghift’s fingers stroke across the rope latticing his back. “Or if you struggle enough to get yourself down. So I trust you’ll be good, and wait.”

He can see the part in his hair from up here, and where the cowlick springs out, still managing to be rebellious against the weight of its greater length. He has the urge to reach out and try to smooth it down. It once struck him as very cute that he and Erst shared one. “What if I fall under my own weight?”

“Then I’ll see to it you’re properly avenged. I know you’d never lie to get yourself out of trouble.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees one of the suits grimace, and turn to the other. How much longer until they go their separate ways? Atosh seemed more angry about being manipulated than losing his men to experimentation; perhaps he is being given something to placate his pride, but this alliance can’t seem beneficial to him anymore.

He is left alone. The unease from his starving stomach comes and goes. He tries to sleep away the discomfort. It’s hard to say how much later it is when it bubbles up the back of his throat. He must vomit. No use contemplating if he’ll be punished for this too. Very slowly, he turns while distrustfully eyeing the loop holding him in the air. With deliberate movements it’s not too hard to move around. One foot out against the rope to make room, roll onto his hip, push a little from the esophagus.

Sour bile explodes into his mouth and out his nose. Thick, membranous bile, slopping past the rope and splattering on the stone. At least it’s not food, he tells himself. At least he kept that down. His eyes water from the sting in his nasal passages. Trying to sneeze it out makes it worse when the little grains of it collect with his snot, making a truly putrid substance drip in burning rivulets from his nostrils. One overly exuberant sneeze hocks up phlegm from the back of his throat, triggering his gag reflex and repeating the process.

He wipes off his face with his wrist. The parts of the rope he’d covered with his sick won’t come clean as easily. He resigns himself to laying on it. Pre-headache tension looms ominously in the back of his head.

It’s next to impossible to sleep like this. Laying on his back makes his legs go straight up or into his chest, and his hips hurt either way. Pushing against the rope only brings relief for as long as he can hold the posture, and even so, he can’t stretch very far. On his side, his legs must be drawn up, causing an ache in them eventually. Resting on his stomach is impossible.

The rope leaves marks against his legs and arms. He can trace the grooves down his backside with his fingertips.

The ceiling is uninteresting. The floor is uninteresting. The walls are uninteresting. Dull grey stone all ways. He can’t even see anything all at once. There are dozens upon dozens of little windows to look from but they cut his vision into chunks. To see anything really he has to press his face into the rope and look with one eye. It makes his head hurt worse.

He drowses desperately. How long now? How long until he has been punished?

When he wakes it feels like he only closed his eyes for a single blink. It’s impossible to tell the time in here and his body clock is all screwed.

He tries to ignore the stale, sour smell in the air by scratching and brushing off the rest of the come dried to him. There has been no other urge to barf but the hunger is returning as a knife serrating his guts. If he at least had an idea how long he’d nod off, that would be something to keep track of.

In. Out. Of sleep, life, his head. This was the point.

Sometimes he does not sleep (or pass out, as it may be), but goes very deep inside, where the memory of Kagerou’s face is as clear as real life. He sees himself patting his soft hair, right between the horns marking off his forehead like a landing pad. So cute, his little brother. His eyes are so big and glossy he can see his reflection in them.

When he does this the yearning to Summon him overshadows everything else. He wishes he didn’t have to care about the potential consequences. He wishes he knew for certain how he is.

His mouth is thick and cottony. Even while dozing his head builds continually to an exploding point. His brain throbs in his skull, shifting in his head with every turn of his. The pain extends into sharp stakes right behind his eyes. Nausea simmers in the background.

In. Out. No position is comfortable anymore for any length of time. He tries to stay still anyway. Each movement jars his headache into blaring horn level strength. Has it been a day at least? Or just a few hours made uncomfortable by his poor health?

It’s hard to breathe. His throat is swollen, scraping like sandpaper on what air he can bring in.

Pressure grows on his bladder. Had this come up earlier it might have been humiliating, but in his present state he has little compunction about taking care of it. Moving into a position he won’t urinate on himself in and getting his penis through a square is more irritating. Maybe it’s the headache making him see things—he has to really squint—but it appears to come out dark, much darker than the typical pale hue he idly notices whenever he takes a pee. More black tea than white. He tries to remember if he’s heard something about that because he _feels_ that he has but it’s hard to think of anything besides Kagerou. His brain stalls.

They had slept together as children, warm and cozy barely inches apart under the blankets. Thinking of that heat draws him into it, gets him lost in it. He slides right into it as a dream when he sleeps. He had no idea what to make of the disappearance of the Brattern family and needed the comfort of another body. And he and Kagerou, though just barely met, were already friends who would give up anything for the other. Even if he didn’t understand, that heat made him think everything would still be alright.

Kagerou. For him… anything…

Will he die like this? He doesn’t want to do it alone… but to keep him safe… keep him safe…

A voice speaks to him, softly exultant. “I knew you’d make it. You won’t break easily. No, not you!”

Somewhere Kagerou is waiting for him. And so, he allows himself to be brought back, though his awareness for a time is still lacking. He has been lowered down; Ghift has returned for him. He is held in his lap and nourished slowly from a few sips of water and what tastes like plain white rice.

“Three days—I wondered—anyone can survive three days, but in your condition? Still, you’ve always been an amazing person. I trusted in that.”

Amazing. Amazing. _Trust_? Three days… twenty-four hours, forty-eight, can’t carry the one. How many hours?

“I cleaned your mess for you. Feel free to be embarrassed by it. But you know, I love the dirty parts of you, too.”

He fades away again, comes back clearer. He’s still starving and thirsty; but something sits in his belly like a lump he can make out, a stone in his gut. Eating seems like a dream. Can’t be sure that it happened. But he sees Ghift’s face above him, and is warmed by his body beneath, so perhaps it did.

“You shouldn’t be too debilitated. I’m sure you don’t have the mental capacity to practice Stola in your state or you would have done it, but I ironed out some of the… kinks for you.”

Folth tries to listen to his body. After that ordeal he’d expect it to be a miserable wreck, but he is not immediately aware of any concerning pain. The silence is not reassuring. He doesn’t like the thought of things happening to him while he’s unconscious. So he has been once again placed in a position where he is in no serious danger, yet will find it difficult to put up any resistance.

“Let’s get you standing again. I have a treat for you.”

A _treat_ is just one letter from being a _threat_. What choice does he have but to receive?

He is assisted to his feet, with uneasy ease. His body is dull and leaden like it was before, but almost entirely absent of any internal pain. A twinge of protest from his spine, his hips, nothing like he’d expect from how he’d been stored away and how miserable he feels. In this respect he’s even better off than he was. Still, he can’t like it.

They make it across the room, to the threshold, where he hesitates before being forced along. There’s no point in worrying about being naked in this room, whoever comes in. It’s just the state of his life here. Outside is different. Outside is where he thinks of as ‘normal space’.

There is no one in the hall, at least. It’s a narrow space, more stone, with another door exactly opposite. One end of the hall comes to a wall, the other to stairs leading up. A basement. Explains the chill in the air.

The other door opens into a room just as dismal as the first, but there is something in it to make his heart stop. He hears a strangled noise that he thinks comes from his own throat. A tub! not even a shitty one! Pretty new porcelain with elegant feet, must have been brought down with the utmost care. He doesn’t even _care_ about stuff like that normally but this is overwhelming luxury when he would have been satisfied with a tin can.

The spout is an ugly piece of metal sticking out from the wall, but the water is clear and pretty and hot, he can see the steam rising, feel the heat skimming his skin from here. “Ghift…”

“Yes?” Neither of them look at each other, but the self-congratulation in his voice is evident. He wants to be praised.

It stings to walk right into what is expected of him. This entire situation was engineered to inspire gratitude and this lump of genuine emotion in his throat. “Thank you.” He can know the truth, and say what he has to. “I really needed this. It’s… thoughtful.”

“I knew you’d like it,” Ghift says, continuing in the same tone. “It’s just the thing. Your first bath here should be like this, after you have begun to learn.”

The water is heavenly. He sinks into it slowly enough to wonder at the release of tension and burst of pure good feeling in his feet, shins, butt, thighs, even his genitals. The water levels ends up coming to his chest when just sitting, which of course he doesn’t for long. There’s room to lounge, so he must lounge—then it comes to his chin. Ghift sits outside the tub beside him and looks amused by him. _Sure_ , Folth thinks bitterly. _Why not? You can take a nice hot bath whenever you want._

It takes little time for his exhaustion to make him pleasantly swoony. He’d like to keep relaxing but he can’t afford to faint, and there’s only so long he can keep away the thought of how disgusting he is. There were undoubtedly still flecks of semen and traces of vomit on him to mix into the water, not to mention all the sweat. He’s marinating in grossness.

A fresh bar of soap sits on the bathtub’s edge for him when he decides to begin washing up. Plain, white, with a nondescript soapy smell. It’s nice to have the ritual of bathing after what seems an age. He feels a little more like normal when he’s able to put his hands on himself and reacquaint with his body that has suffered so much. Nothing is very different, except the scruff on his face that surprises him. The rope marks aren’t so abraded. The bruises are mostly faded. He is essentially healthy. That Ghift is watching him, he manages to almost entirely forget until he speaks.

“I’ll wash your back for you. Just like I used to.”

He closes his eyes and hands the soap back. It slivers under his nails from his grip.

As young boys they would sit in his tub and scrub each other’s backs and scalps—after the first few times, it was more like scrubbing than washing, as they lost their timidity and bathtime became an extended time of play. He remembers once leaning over the edge after catching a mouthful of sudsy water, spitting and gagging. On the night of his eighth birthday his parents took them both out to eat and play at the park until long past their curfew. The water made him so sleepy he nodded off and, as he liked to tease for months after, probably would have drowned if Ghift hadn’t let him rest against his chest.

Ghift said that even then, he had loved him. At that point had it just been an ordinary crush? Surely an eight year old wouldn’t want to do the things that he currently is. On the other hand, only a few years later he essentially murdered his brother.

It doesn’t make a material difference either way. But it feels like the childhood he had known might have been a lie. Would Ghift tell him, if he asked, exactly the nature of things then? He thinks so. But then, he doesn’t want to ask. He wants to keep that happy, rosy past, and the idea that their relationship was genuine, that he had known the real Ghift.

“Let’s give your hair a quick go, too. Next time I’ll bring shampoo.”

He slides under. Ghift’s fingers plunge through his hair, getting every strand thoroughly soaked. They cup the back of his head, pulling him back up. The wash is quick and hard, getting right into his roots, and leaves him feeling only half-clean on the rinse.

“You don’t grow much beard,” Ghift says. He turns his head toward his to see him better. Folth lowers his eyes to Ghift’s wet forearms, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “The first time you woke up, I couldn’t see it at all. Just felt a few prickles. Must be because of your hair. Right now it’s this red-gold glimmer on your jaw that’s not bad… but I prefer you clean-shaved to not.”

He nods slightly. “I’ve never tried growing it out. It didn’t seem like it would.”

“What do you use to shave?”

“Just my hair conditioner…”

“I’ll bring that next time, too. Right now, we’ll just use the soap.”

Has he ever used body soap? Not that he can remember. His hair feels weird so probably it’ll dry his skin out, but if he can skim by without cream hopefully it won’t turn his face into a total disaster area.

“You must have to shave every day.” It’s the only safe, relevant thing he can think of for conversation. That he has the need to converse at all is ridiculous, but otherwise he’d be sitting here in silence while his face and neck are lathered up, and contemplating how much he doesn’t want Ghift near his neck with a razor. And he is not blind to the fact that it is wiser to stay in his good graces.

“Yes, every morning.” He pauses, eyeing his cheek critically, then starts slowly with the grain. The weight of the razor almost makes Folth jump, but it travels an easy few inches without catching. “My stubble comes in very dark. Does Kagerou? Shave?”

“Not yet.” The day that happened would be the day he’d buy shaving cream, he always thought. Kagerou seems in his mind too delicate for making do with conditioner—so delicate he can hardly think he’ll _ever_ need to shave. Look at his cute baby face! His skin must be just as fine. Anything less than cream might give him hives.

He almost asks about Erst, just because it seems like the natural step in their list of acquaintances after asking about one another, but realizes, of course he had. A man grown enough to be employed no doubt had to shave occasionally.

Ghift touches underneath his chin, pushing slightly up. Folth closes his eyes again before baring his neck. The blade is so close he can only breathe so slowly his lungs ache with the cramped conditions. It’s a surprise each time it touches him after being rinsed off.

“Sometimes I would stand in the doorway and watch Erst,” Ghift says as easily as if he’d picked up the train of thought from Folth’s mind. “He looked so grown-up to me… you know how shaving does, before it becomes a regular annoyance. I imagined doing it for him. I’d sit on the bathroom counter with his neck before me, his life in my hands. I’d be so nervous about nicking him I wouldn’t commit to the strokes, the stubble all patchy, so he’d put his hand on mine to guide me…”

The ember of an uncomfortable arousal glows in his belly. He doesn’t want to feel it in any connection with someone who has assaulted him, but that he is, probably just means he is empathizing with the desire for Erst. Even when that desire is coming from Erst’s younger brother. The incest should disgust him but the confession hadn’t, either. Maybe he’s saving all of his negative emotions for his own experiences. Sparing them for something like this seems nearly indulgent.

“By the time we were finished we’d have drawn closer in, and my lips would part…” He stops, razor now on the other side of his adam’s apple, and he can imagine him doing it; lips opening, preparing for the kiss he’s imagining. “He knows… and I know… blood or age, neither matter.”

He touches his chin again, but now to prompt downward. After the lead-up of the conversation Folth is able to ready himself this time for the mood he’s in, and is sadly not disappointed.

It’s strange, this press of lips. It lacks the great warmth he has heard about. But maybe that was always metaphorical for love, of which he has none. Slightly chapped. Firm. The scent of apples, and something bitter. Poisonous. His first kiss, forced from him like his first sexual experience with another, like other things he doesn’t want to think about might be… he turns his head to the side and hides his grief with shyness.

“I’ve never…”

“Anxious?”

He nods.

To his surprise, Ghift regards him with what looks like genuine thoughtfulness. He continues shaving the rest of the lather off, then soaps him up again for another go-over. Afterward Folth rubs his fingers over his lower face and finds his skin dried-out, but otherwise as bare as a baby’s butt. Perhaps he is being given a chance to collect himself. Just a chance. He won’t count on having bought himself anything more. There’s too much meaning in his eyes, his fingers, stroking and looking over his face to see for himself that the job is done.

When he speaks again, it only cements that certainty. “My first kiss was with Erst, long ago. Once you’ve had a few days to recover I’ll tell you all about it.” He smiles and leaves off, even though Folth wishes for once for him to keep talking. Does he mean a child’s kiss that he interpreted as more with his infatuation to twist it? Or—no, Erst wasn’t that sort of person. He still believes that.

The drain is opened. He steps carefully out of the water, Ghift holding onto his arms in case he slips. Now that he’s shivering naked in the cool air, the arm-hold closes the gap between them, turning to his hips instead and keeping him still until they are chest to chest with an erection between them. “Ghift, I’m…”

“Shh. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

He supposes that could be true, if a kiss is really all he wants. It shouldn’t hurt. And he has learned pretty well how much he can be hurt.

It feels like it hurts. His whole body burns and aches, then numbs. His insides disappear. He might, too, if he’s not careful, and he has to be. The kiss itself is gentle. Not anything he would have a reason to be repulsed by. Just careful pressing, over and over, from slightly different angles when their heads move. He tries to return it. But he can’t help jerking away when something wet slides across his bottom lip. “Ghift!”

Ghift hushes him. One of his hands moves to cradle the back of his head. “Everything’s alright. Oh, Folth, I love you so much.” The extent of his love pushes insistently against his leg. “It’s alright to let yourself love me now. It’s just us two. Nobody else matters but Erst; and him, even if you still love him, that’s alright too. Things can be like they always were. Just the three of us.”

_Do you see at all how you’re killing me? Do you care?_

He must, a little, even if he thinks it for the best. Killing the old Folth for the new one. A Folth that he hopes will want him and everything he’s done.

Between the two reassurances, returning his words or his kiss, Folth chooses the latter. He does not think he can say ‘I love you’ and sound like he means it. But it won’t matter that his kiss is clumsy. Who can expect otherwise from a virgin? Or whatever he currently is.

Their noses bump hard, adding a new variety of pain and ache to his body, teeth clacking bone on bone when their lips open. He cedes to allow entry into himself. Throughout his life he has imagined doing this with Erst, idly while waiting lines, while waking up and rolling over half-hoping into a body, while his hands are between his legs at night. It made him warmer than the summer sun in his body, starrier in his head than a crisp winter night. His heart waxed like the full moon. Kissing like this is the disappointment of a million daydreams.

It’s not actively unpleasant, if he ignores the context around it. Just less than he thought. The wiggling tongue in his mouth is hot and ticklish on the roof and along his gums. It fills him up far more than his own tongue does. His breath comes in fits and starts. Ghift won’t part long enough to let him take a proper one in; he stays as close as he can to him, closer, like he wants to melt into him. Each time he tries to turn his face the grip cupping his skill screws into his hair.

He’s ashamed of the drool on his chin when he’s finally released. It is a sign of passion. It says he enjoyed this. Then he is ashamed too of his dizzy, flushed face and heaving chest, the symptoms of his near suffocation. His skin crawls. His heart is beating a mile a minute and he knows _why_ but he wishes he wasn’t matching Ghift panting at him. Like this was a mutual little rendezvous.

He swallows. Ghift’s saliva tastes like his scent.

“Mine.” Ghift kisses his forehead with far more gentleness. “Big brother was never able to have this, however much he must have wished to.”

Folth makes no reply to that, though hearing another suggestion about this supposed perversion in Erst rankles. “I feel funny. Not more grown-up.”

“I felt it right away, but mine was a more unconventional case.” It’s a very slow, rocking movement, but he’s definitely humping his leg. Folth makes no mention of that, either, though his awareness of it must show on his face. Ghift laughs. “That’s why we’re going to take things slow. So you can savor all the steps.”

“ _Slow_? After last time? Kissing normally comes first, I thought.” At least, as long as he’s not being resistant, he doesn’t seem to mind him speaking openly, as though… as though they were still close friends. “You’re doing things backwards.”

Ghift laughs again. Right. Close friends, just teasing a little. That has to be how he sees this. “You wouldn’t have kissed me if we started with that. Even from where we did start, you still refused me afterwards.”

He can hardly deny his own wearing down, as much as he wants to. “Are we doing anything else backwards today?”

“As much as I would love to” _yes_! “let’s get you off the boiled rice and chicken first. I don’t want to expend any more of your energy just yet.”

He is put to bed, like a child, with a nightshirt to wear, a thick comforter to lay over him, a longer chain so he can actually leave the bed, and a portable toilet to leave the bed for. “You’ve taken in so little and been so dehydrated,” Ghift says near cheerfully, like he had nothing at all to do with those things, “you’re likely constipated. I’ll keep an eye on that too. Tell me if your joints hurt, or if you begin to feel feverish.”

Throughout the day he is visited a few more times with a glass of water, and a plate of bland, easy food. He sleeps away the time between. Nice and deeply, not entirely by his own will this time. He is simply exhausted.


End file.
